How To Live A Life Of Purpose

What does it all mean.?

This piece comes from the many conversations I’ve had with a lot of guys, from thugs to A+ students. The one question I seemed to have in common with these men was, “what is the meaning of life?”

I can only assume that at one point in our lives we have asked ourselves “why are we here, where are we going?” it is a difficult question, I believe, because the answer is not uniform. Evolution says we are here to survive, the Bible says we are here to be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth, even the Matrix says we are here to fulfil a purpose. Therefore, we shall never know the absolute truth on this matter. But that doesn’t stop us from asking.

Abstract

It seems with every culture you will have a unique description of what life means; it might be to go to school and graduate and work, some might say it is to herd cattle and get circumcised at the appropriate age and get married, some can say it is to acquire wealth and power and leaving a legacy, some might even say it is to be callous and YOLO and all of that. But then, those are activities, functions of life, not life. What is life?

The Formula

One of the guys I was with talked about how life has been made formulaic, he talked about the checkpoints that have been put into place for a person to judge whether he or she is living or merely existing. If we didn’t go to school, or have jobs or money, could it be said that we are not living?

Life by definition

I believe we have come to define life by things; what we have, what we must have, and so on and so forth and stuff like that. When those things are removed, what is left is a person who doesn’t know what to do with themselves. Which brings us to…

Purpose

Defined as intention, as why. A car is made for a purpose, to take a person from point A to point B. A kettle is made to boil water faster. What is the purpose of the human mammal? Surely we are not here just to consume. The Bible says that God made man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it. This would mean that man has work to do on this planet. Our purposes, however different from one another, are interlinked together like an orchestra. If life was a computer, it would have different hardware components connected to one thing and the various software programs that ensure that the system works efficiently.

As I said before, we will never answer this question, yet I can say, we have been given talents, resources that are to direct us towards our purpose, no matter how big or small. I would like to say, to live is to have purpose, and to have purpose is to live.